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The Party of "No"

Technorati and Me

Technorati is indexing me again! They had to make a code change to fix
the problem with my blog getting stuck in their queue. Kudos to Eric M.
and the guys at
GetSatisfaction.com
where they have "community powered support for Technorati".

Well, they're "sorta, kinda" indexing me anyway. It's on a 24 hour tape
delay or something. So I never get picked up by Memeorandum because they
pull from Technorati and Technorati has stuff I posted yesterday
listed as my latest blog entry. And that's old news to Memeorandum.

Wankers.

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research and educational purposes."

Oops. You can't mention "home computers" on Jane's test. Might make a kid
without her own computer feel inferior.

Seriously.

C'mon guys, please stop laughing.

There are
50 words and phrases which are now verbotten on student tests
written for the New York City school system.

Fearing that certain words and topics can make students feel unpleasant,
officials are requesting 50 or so words be removed from city-issued tests.

The word "dinosaur" made the hit list because dinosaurs suggest evolution which
creationists might not like.

Guys! I asked you to stop laughing!

"Halloween" is targeted because it suggests paganism; a "birthday" might not
be happy to all because it isn't celebrated by Jehovah's Witnesses.

Words that suggest wealth are excluded because they could make kids jealous.
"Poverty" is also on the forbidden list.

You can't make this stuff up.

Even more interesting though is what's not on the list.

"Condom" passed muster. Because, after all, the schools pass them
out like candy. Also A-OK: "homosexual." I believe there's mandatory
class participation involved with that one. Sex-ed starts in Kindergarten;
but discussions of hunting might be too controversial?

Religion is off-limits. So you can't mention religious holidays, such as
Christmas, Yom Kippur, and Ramadan. But made-up holidays like Kwanzaa seem
to be admissible.

"Divorce" got blacklisted because it implies there was a marriage in the first
place. That certainly won't do any good for the all the children of single moms
who've never even met their fathers. But of course "abortion" remains fair game.
Most schools already have an in-house Planned Parenthood clinic fully staffed
for all your womens' health needs so it would be pointless to avoid that topic.

And I'm surprised "homeschooling" didn't make it onto the banned words list.
It seems like the only sane alternative to the overly-educated sufferers of
cranial-rectal syndrome who came up with this cockamamie idea in the first
place.